ful stories were retold today as a faith leader, a government regulator and a rural advocate were honored at the 34th Annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. The annual lecture is sponsored by Office of Communications, Inc. (OC Inc.), the media justice ministry of the United Church of Christ (UCC), which was founded by the late Rev. Parker.

Commissioner Clyburn, Dee Davis, Rev. Traci Blackmon

The Rev. Traci Blackmon, this year’s Parker Lecturer, framed her remarks by recounting a West African proverb: “Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” Blackmon, currently the UCC’s acting executive minister for justice and witness ministries, came to national attention in the fall of 2014 as part of the pastoral presence working to quell months of civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown there.

Blackmon noted that as a young African-American girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, and later as pastor of a church near Ferguson, she had learned something of the “power and marginalization of the lion’s story.”

She stressed the importance of understanding the context of a story, and cast the Brown shooting within the history of the St. Louis metropolitan area and a long list of recent shootings of unarmed black men by police officers. She noted that “the mainstream media is not the only resource for hearing the story of the lion,” and pointed to the role that social media had played in the coverage of the Ferguson story.

Rev. Traci Blackmon

But she also spoke, powerfully, of her own temptation to claim the high road but “remove the humanity” of those with whom she disagrees. “But when we do that,” she concluded, “we are not better and we are no more righteous.” She cautioned, “it is too easy to look outside ourselves for the answers that lie within,” because “within us all lies both the lion and the hunter.” “We are experts at extrapolating stories that soothe us, but God has not called us to be comforted, but rather to comfort the afflicted.”

In her acceptance speech, Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn turned to a Biblical text in accepting the Newton Minow Award, conferred by the UCC in recognition of exemplary government service in support of the public interest. Clyburn, who faced scrutiny when took office in 2009 without previous experience in Washington, quoted from 1 Samuel 16: “people look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” She noted “people had doubts, people drew conclusions, but they did not know what was in my heart.”

Commissioner Clyburn

Clyburn, who served as acting chair of the agency in 2013, was recognized for her leadership in restricting the predatory telephone rates that had been charged to families and friends of prisoners, and for the agency’s moves to modernize the Lifeline program that helps low-income people afford telecommunications services. She described a recent visit to a correctional facility, looking in the eyes of a small boy who gets few opportunities to visit his incarcerated mother. She noted that in the half-century since Everett Parker founded OC Inc., the “next generation of advanced telecommunications services” present “issues that are increasingly complex.” But, she said, the mission of the FCC still needed to be focused on ensuring that all Americans have access to “robust and affordable telecommunications services.”

Dee Davis, president and founder of the Center for Rural Strategies, received the Everett C. Parker Award for work embodying the principles and values of the public interest in telecommunications and media. Davis got his start as a trainee at Appalshop, the arts and cultural center in Whitesburg, Ky., and eventually rose to be its president.

Davis expressed his appreciation that “people in this town,” the nation’s capital, had launched the War on Poverty in the 1960s, providing funds that had built the center for “the people in my town,” and t

Dee Davis

eaching him skills in media production. He joked that the award would “vindicate the Hillbilly Sunday School teachers who gave up on me.” Looking back on his career, and the “powerful tools” that are now available—cameras, computers, and broadcast licenses—he urged his audience to “use them for good.” He spoke movingly about the power of being a “witness to history.”

OC Inc. established the Parker Lectureship in 1983 to recognize its founder’s pioneering work as an advocate for the public’s rights in broadcasting. In 1963, Parker filed a petition with the FCC that ultimately stripped WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, of its broadcast license and established the principle that the public could participate in matters before the agency. Parker died on September 17, 2015 at the age of 102. The Parker Lecture is the only lecture in the country to examine telecommunications in the digital age from an ethical perspective.

More photos, video clips and materials from the Lecture will be available on UCC OC Inc.'s web site in the near future.

Today’s Federal Communications Commission order on media ownership is the regulatory equivalent or waving a white flag of surrender. The critical issues of race, power, white privilege and justice are at the center for our national conversation; the media’s coverage of the presidential election may well be determinative of the outcome; and the FCC is peering timidly out from the shadows, showing none of the bold leadership that it brought to bear elsewhere in the last two years.

The FCC made absolutely no progress on media diversity. It has ignored, for a third time, the mandate of the U.S. courts and the directives of the Communications Act. While the FCC did maintain the existing rules, meaning it has not given a green light to more media consolidation, Congress’ action to permit companies to circumvent those rules means we are likely to see—in practice—more joint operations than ever.

The FCC failed to engage with industry, the civil rights community, or public interest advocates to find any meaningful action to fulfill its statutory obligation to promote media diversity. It is no surprise that we are seeing the same re-hash of the same issues as we have for the last twenty years.

In 1968, the Kerner Commission concluded, “the press has too long basked in a white world, looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and a white perspective. That is no longer good enough. The painful process of readjustment that is required of the American news media must begin now. They must make a reality of integration--in both their product and personnel. They must insist on the highest standards of accuracy--not only reporting single events with care and skepticism, but placing each event into meaningful perspective. They must report the travail of our cities with compassion and depth.”

History’s lesson is as relevant today as it was then. Our only hope is that the next FCC Chair will take up these matters with seriousness and dispatch.

The United Church of Christ’s media justice ministry will honor Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and rural advocate Dee Davis when it holds the 34th Annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture and Awards Breakfast on October 13.

As previously announced, the Rev. Traci Blackmon, acting executive minister of the UCC’s Justice and Witness Ministries, will deliver this year’s lecture, to be held at First Congregational United Church of Christ, 945 G Street NW, in Washington, DC, beginning at 8 a.m.

Commissioner Clyburn will receive the Newton Minow Award in recognition of her work at the commission to reform predatory prison telephone rates and to modernize the Lifeline program that supports telecommunications services to low-income households. This marks only the second time that the UCC’s Office of Communication Inc. (OC Inc.) has conferred the Minow Award, given in recognition of exemplary government service. Clyburn has been a member of the FCC since 2009, and served as its acting chair from May to November 2013.

Dee Davis, president and founder of the Center for Rural Strategies, will receive the Everett C. Parker Award, in recognition of more than 40 years of work to bring telecommunications services to rural America, particularly the people of Appalachia. The Parker Award is given annually in recognition of an individual whose work embodies the principles and values of the public interest in telecommunications and the media as demonstrated by the late Rev. Dr. Parker, OC Inc.’s founder.

Starting as a trainee in 1973 at Appalshop, the prominent Appalachia-based media, arts, and education center, Davis became its first president and spearheaded a number of initiatives that used media as a strategic tool for organizing and rural development. In 2000, he founded the Center for Rural Strategies to improve economic and social conditions for rural communities, both at home and around the world, through the innovative use of media and communications. Since then, he and the center have been instrumental in building and managing the National Rural Assembly, a coalition of more than 1,000 organizations and individuals seeking to promote the concerns of rural America.

Rev. Blackmon, this year’s Parker Lecturer, came to national attention in the fall of 2014 as part of the pastoral presence working to quell months of civil unrest in Ferguson, MO, following the fatal police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown. She assumed her current UCC post last January, and has since been appointed by President Barack Obama to his 15-member Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The Parker Lecture was created in 1982 to recognize the Rev. Dr. Parker’s pioneering work as an advocate for the public's rights in broadcasting. The event is the only lecture in the country to examine telecommunications in the digital age from an ethical perspective. Rev. Dr. Parker died in 2015 at the age of 102.

The Cleveland-based United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination with nearly 1 million members and more than 5,000 local congregations nationwide, recognizes the unique power of the media to shape public understanding and thus society as a whole. For this reason, the UCC’s OC, Inc. has worked since its founding in 1959 to create just and equitable media structures that give a meaningful voice to diverse peoples, cultures and ideas.

For more information about the 2016 Parker Lecture and Breakfast, or to purchase tickets, go to www.uccmediajustice.org.

Yesterday we had a great, twofold victory for communications rights. The Lifeline program helps low-income people to find jobs, get an education and connect to emergency services by offering a modest financial subsidy to subscribe to telephone, and after a new FCC ruling takes effect this year, to Internet services.

The bill, which was brought through an unusual process, forced through by House leadership, was voted down on the House floor. The loss was so substantial that another amendment to cap the program and block eligible families from obtaining their subsidies, that was to be offered later this week as part of a budget bill was withdrawn.

This program is essential, it has been recognized by the President as an important part of our policies to improve economic justice. Great thanks to everyone who wrote, tweeted, posted, made speeches yesterday to ensure that we can keep our communities connected.